For the past few days, an essay titled “How Aristotle Created The Computer” (The Atlantic, March 20, 2017, by Chris Dixon) has been making the rounds. It begins with the following claim: The history of computers is often told as a history of objects, from the abacus to the Babbage engine up through the code-breakingContinue reading “No, Aristotle Did Not ‘Create’ The Computer”
Tag Archives: Turing machines
Noam Chomsky, My Palestinian Student, and a Gift
A few years ago, at Brooklyn College, I taught a class on the formal theory of computation. We covered the usual topics: finite state automata, context-free grammars, Turing machines, computational complexity. As we worked through the theory of context-free grammars, I introduced my students to the concept of their Chomsky normal forms. As a quick preliminary,Continue reading “Noam Chomsky, My Palestinian Student, and a Gift”
Samir Chopra 